Spinifex People

The Pila Nguru, often referred to in English as the 'Spinifex people', are an Indigenous Australian people of Western Australia, whose lands extend to the border with South Australia and to the north of the Nullarbor Plain. The centre of their homeland is in the Great Victoria Desert, at Tjuntjunjarra, some 700 kilometres east of Kalgoorlie, perhaps the remotest community in Australia. The Pila Nguru were the last Australian tribe to have dropped the complete trappings of their traditional aboriginal lifestyle.

They maintain in large part their traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle within the territory, over which their claims to Native title and associated collective rights were recognised by a 28 November 2000 Federal Court decision. In 1997, an art project was started in which indigenous paintings became part of the title claim. In 2005, a major exhibit of their works in London brought the artists widespread attention.

Spinifex people speak south western dialects of the Wati language division of the Pama–Nyungan languages. The name Pila Nguru is an abbreviation of Anaṉgu tjuta pila nguru ('people-land-spinifex-from', or people from the land of the spinifex) and reflects an identity rooted in a sense of tenure of territory rather than a strictly linguistic classification.

The contemporary centre is found on the southern edge of the Spinifex homelands. The arid desert which forms the environment where the Pila Nguru live has tree varieties like mulga, western myall and casuarina as well as varieties of cassia, sandalwood and spinifex.Spinifex grasses (porcupine/hummock grasses) dominated communities over 22% of the traditional Australian landmass, and the arid desert areas contain some 35 species. The variety called 'soft spinifex' or, in pidgin English bush araldite is Triodia pungens, prized for its cementing qualities. The general term in Western desert languages for the plant is tjanpi, the plain where it grows is pila, the plant itself, in the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara languages was tjapura, while the Spinifex resin extracted from it is called kiti.

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